It’s been 4 years since we introduced Resolume Avenue & Arena 4. In those 4 years we released many many updates which brought a lot of improvements, effects and new features. It was time for something new, and we are proud to present to you: Resolume Arena 5.



We looked at the most important features that needed to be improved and this was clearly video mapping in Arena. Video mapping has taken the world by storm the past few years. We wanted to make this even easier and even more flexible with Resolume Arena 5. With Arena you can take on any size mapping project. Projecting on DJ booths and cars and buildings, as well as pixel mapping giant stages like Ultra. Projection mapping has gone from an artsy curiosity to a requirement in the toolbox of all VJ's.

Zoooooomin
With stages becoming bigger and LED resolutions going up it’s now easier to get everything pixel perfect by zooming in to your slices as far you need to make the final adjustment.


Undo (yes really)
In the advanced output you can now undo (and redo) all your actions. This is incredibly handy because video mapping can become quite complex and is not always an exact science. Sometimes you need to fiddle the sliders until it’s pixel perfect. You can now work on a complex mapping with the ease of mind that you can always go back in time, like Doc & Marty.


Polygon slices (poly what?)
This new way of video mapping is so innovative we even had to think of a name for it ;-) We’re calling them Poly Slices. Draw any shape you want and then warp each individual point. Triangles were just the beginning, young grasshopper.


Snapping
Slices and points will jump into place when they get close enough. So you don't need to find that sweet spot twice.

Slice masks
You can now apply a mask to one specific slice by using the new input masking. You can even draw your own shape from scratch.


Multi Select
Lasso your slices like a cowboy and herd them dawgies to the corral in one mighty swoop.

Led There Be Light
You can now start thinking outside the (box) screen because you can now send your pretty little pixels to DMX fixtures. Let them light up in any color, at any time, in sync with your visuals. Better improvised synchronisation between music and visuals is the very first reason why we started on Resolume all those years ago. It’s a very logical step to add the lights to that as well. This way your shows are even more coherent and integrated.


Output via BlackMagic Devices
Those fancy BlackMagic capture devices can not only bring images into Resolume. With Arena 5 you can also output via BlackMagic devices. This way you can easily output to another screen on a laptop that might not have multiple outputs. And output to professional SDI connections without having to buy a special expensive videocard that has SDI outputs.

Spout
Spout is the Windows equivalent of the hugely popular Syphon on the Mac. It allows you to output and input visuals from one application to the other, all in real-time. So create a sketch in Processing and send that to Resolume or send the Resolume output to the virtual Spout webcam and stream that to YouTube. Spout opens a lot of possibilities because there is already so much other Spout compatible software. Checkout their website.

Pricing
New Arena 5 license: 799 Euro
Upgrade Arena 4 to 5: 269 euro
Upgrade Avenue to Arena 5: 500 euro
New Avenue 4 license: 299 Euro

Log in to your account to purchase your upgrade today.

Avenue?
Because most of these major new features are media server related and only in Arena there is no major update for Avenue. So you can continue to use Avenue 4 without a paid upgrade.

Grace Period
If you bought Arena 4 after September 1st, just contact us and we'll upgrade you to Arena 5.


Much, much, more
Besides all these major new features we have also fixed many small bugs and made many minor improvements. Read below for the full release notes or hit the download!

NEW - AV set and demo footage
NEW - Fixture editor
NEW - Virtual screen routing
NEW - Drag and drop output presets
NEW - Modifiers galore
NEW - Input slice rotation
NEW - Opacity and Bypass toggles on Layer Router
NEW - Preview available as source for Layer Router and Slices
NEW - Create slices and masks by drawing
NEW - Screen output delay compensation
NEW - Screen output opacity & color correction
NEW - Screen folding
NEW - Slice flipping
NEW - Slice Top & Left coordinates
NEW - Slice color correction
NEW - Slice force black background
NEW - New interface colours: Minty Pinky
NEW - Redesigned toolbar for better read- and click-ability
NEW - Windows large address aware for better memory management
NEW - 8 pixel grid on output
NEW - Improved crosshairs


Bug fixes
FIXED - Support more than one webcam of the same type on PC
FIXED - After re-locating a Source, Flash or QC file, any parameter changes are reset to the default value
FIXED - When toggling Mask 1, all other Masks toggle as well
FIXED - BPM Clock pause and resume flips out when using midi clock
FIXED - Audio Clip set to play once and playmode away continue does not restart when finished
FIXED - Multiselect reset param doesn’t work when you click on name
FIXED - Noisy effect: Interpolate does not work until show UV is turned on and off
FIXED - DeckLink device with no inputs causes other devices not to load
FIXED - BPM set audio clip not responding to pause/BPM after deckswitch.
FIXED - BPM Synced parameter also occasionally flashes last 'frame' on Resync
FIXED - Blend Modes are not correctly displayed on Layer Panel
FIXED - Deadlock: Opening preferences with cmd + , while audio is playing and apc40mk2 is turned on
FIXED - DMX Invert no worky on buttons
FIXED - Retrigger and Continue modes are very confused on AV clips
FIXED - A clip set to 'play once and eject' should not eject the incoming clip during a transition
FIXED - Midi Note piano shortcut on slider should respect min value
FIXED - Add Close button to Timeline popup
FIXED - BPM pause doesn’t work for audio clips that are active but in other deck
FIXED - Mask drag, drop and copy not functioning properly
FIXED - A clip set to 'play once and eject' should not eject the incoming clip during a transition
FIXED - When retriggering the incoming clip in a transition, the outgoing clip should not restart
FIXED - Cross-fader position is not saved in composition
FIXED - Mapping ccs to Crossfader
FIXED - Source duration spinner jumps to min and max when dragged
FIXED - Check for illegal characters in savefile name
FIXED - Alpha on a JPEG? What kind of witchcraft is this?


Upgrade FAQ

I have a Res Avenue 4 license but there’s no Avenue 5! Do I need to upgrade to Arena 5 to get the new stuff?
No. Avenue 4.5 is a free upgrade for anyone with a Avenue 4.x license. It has all the bug fixes and comes with native Spout support.

I have a Res Arena 4 license but Arena 5 is a paid upgrade. Do I have to pay for bug fixes?
You don’t. If you don’t want to upgrade to Arena 5 just yet, Arena 4.2.2 is a free upgrade for anyone with a Arena 4.x license. It has all the bug fixes of Arena 5, just not the fancy new Advanced Output. Download Arena 4.2.2 for Mac and PC.

I just bought Arena 4 last week and now you bring out an update. This sucks!
Don’t worry. If you bought Arena 4 after September 1st, just contact us and we’ll give you an Arena 5 license, no questions asked. If you feel we’ve treated you unfairly in any other way, just drop us a line and we’ll work something out.

What about feature X ?1?!?!. You said it was coming in Res 5. I really need feature X! I can’t live without feature X!
Yeah, that sucks. We wanted to pack so much more features in this release. As it turns out, putting all of that in and getting it stable, would mean you’d have to wait another 2 years for the next version. And we couldn’t let you wait that long. So just make awesome shows with all the cool new stuff that’s in Arena now, and we’ll continue working on all the other things.

"Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance."
Kurt Vonnegut, Hocus Pocus


We don't particularly like doing maintenance either, it always takes longer then expected. But we know you will enjoy a more stable Resolume. So with version 4.2.1 we managed to control ourself and just did maintenance. No shiny new toys, just the all important maintenance. Hit the download!

[FIXED] BlackMagic Intensity (Pro) jumps to 0x0 resolution after moving clip or reloading
[FIXED] Thumbnailing fails on short clips
[FIXED] Clip sometimes shows last frame on resync
[FIXED] Retrigger and Continue modes are confused if clip start offset is set in preferences
[FIXED] Continue on clip with in and outpoint no worky
[FIXED] Comp Midi map shortcuts for Clip Transport BPM Sync /2 and *2 are not saved
[FIXED] Window background color black instead of White
[FIXED] DXV 3 compression memory leak
[FIXED] Instant crash with non clean aperture DXV3 file
[FIXED] DXV 3 No Quicktime FFmpeg fallback no worky
[FIXED] Transitions don't work on PC with DXV3HQ files and sources with alpha
[FIXED] QuickLook plugin prevents files from being deleted
[FIXED] QuickLook plugin breaks Photo Jpeg thumbnailing
[FIXED] Solid Color effect jumps to pink on 1.0
[FIXED] Some plugins crash on start
[FIXED] Some plugins have memory leaks

Enjoy!
The Resolume Team

So, a few weeks ago we publicly released a new version of DXV, imaginatively called DXV3.0. It's a big improvement, and people love it. To make sure you get the best out of the codec, here's an upgrade guide.

First of all, DXV3 encoded movies will only work in Resolume 4.2 and above. In previous versions, Resolume will think they are very big and slow Quicktime files, and you will not have a good time. If you want to use DXV3, you're committed to Res 4.2.

DXV3.0 has 3 benefits: it's faster at high resolutions, files are generally smaller and it has a high quality option.

In general, we don't recommend re-encoding your entire library. Your old DXV2 files will play fine in Resolume 4.2, and you still get all the benefits of improved smoothness and bug fixes.

So there is no need to re-encode your entire DXV2 library. Especially do not re-encode your DXV2 files to DXV3 High Quality. Because you are rendering from a DXV2 source, any image artifacts are already rendered into the file. Your image quality is not improved at all, the only thing you get is bigger files that look exactly the same. And that's probably not what you want.

There are only three scenarios where we would advise re-encoding.
[fold][/fold]
1. A DXV encoded file shows a lot of banding on gradients. In this case you can re-encode to DXV3 High Quality. But you will need to have the original file as a uncompressed source or render it again straight from After Effects or Cinema4D. Of course, encoding the DXV2 source to DXV3 will show no improvements, because the banding is already rendered into the file.

Expect file size to double when encoding to DXV3 HQ. With great power comes great responsibility, so don't use High Quality as your default render setting. You'll run out of disk space real quick. Only use it on files that have visible artefacts when you render them to Normal Quality.

DXV3 Normal Quality is exactly the same image quality as DXV2. In other words, the picture quality will be exactly the same when rendering the same source file to DXV2 or to DXV3 Normal Quality.

2. You consistently scrape by on performance at high resolutions. We don't have exact figures yet, but DXV3 performs a LOT better when playing back 4K files. When you run 640x480 or 3 or 4 layers of 1080p, re-encoding won't do much for you, but when playing 4K, you can expect around a 30% improvement.

3. You cannot store all your files. DXV3 Normal Quality should be around 25% smaller than DXV2. This can vary considerably between different types of content. Minimal line content can go down as much as 50%, but highly detailed photographic content can stay around the same.

So, hopefully this clear things up a bit. If you have any questions, we'll be happy to answer them.

///// So yeah, as most of you figured out, this was our April Fools' joke for 2015. See you next year, everyone! /////

One of the exciting new features in Res 4.2 is speech recognition. That’s right, you can now control Resolume just by saying what you want to do.

Check the video for an overview of the basic controls and a some hints on the new special effect commands.



Of course speech recognition needs a clear sound signal, so when using it in a club environment, it’s best to ask the DJ to turn the music down.

4.2 improves on the stuff that you use every day. The stuff that allows you to do your amazing shows on screens all across the globe. Because we know this is what matters to you most. A stable, fast and healthy application.

UPDATE: We have now also released maintenance version 4.2.1 which brings a number of bug fixes.


[fold][/fold]
New DXV 3 codec
Faster playback, smaller files, better image quality. What more can you ask from a codec?


For most content, file size has gone down 25% when using an alpha channel. Increased file size is no longer an excuse to render your footage without alpha. Luma keying is sooooo 2004.

There is now a high quality option in the codec for those cases where your subtle gradients were showing banding. Beware, with great power comes great responsibility: files are twice as big in this high quality mode. So use it where banding is an issue, not as the default render setting.

2 SMPTE Inputs
Because 2 is better than 1.


Workflow is improved with nice big buttons on the layers & clip panels and you’ll see the timecode on the toolbar so it’s there where you need it.

Smooother playback
This one caused quite a few grey hairs on our balding skulls ;-) It took us very long to find out where exactly things were going wrong, but we finally improved playback smoothness.

To get the best results, render your clips on 30fps (not 25), use the DXV codec, set the playback to timeline (not BPM) and remove audio from your clips.

Respect Bypass on slices with layer input
You can now set a slice to ignore the bypass of a layer. This way you can hide a layer from the composition but still use it in the advanced output.


So here it is. Our baby. Her name is Resolume 4.2, she’s stable, fast, beautiful, super healthy and ready to discover the world. Download.

[NEW] Two SMPTE inputs
[NEW] DXV 3.0 Codec
[NEW] Respect Bypass on slices with layer input
[NEW] Mac QuickLook plugin to show DXV thumbnails and previews in Finder
[NEW] Show Display Info has more detailed info
[NEW] Deck focus is the default focus instead of Layer
[NEW] Noisy Effect, Noisy Blend Mode, Grid Effect
[NEW] New demo footage deck

[FIXED] Improved playback smoothness
[FIXED] Alpha not recognised in Animation codec
[FIXED] Improved support for APC20 and APC40 MK2
[FIXED] Smpte offset spinner doesn't work on clip level
[FIXED] Sources and effects not loading
[FIXED] Crashes with some corrupt DXV files
[FIXED] Double clicking a comp file still opens the last loaded comp
[FIXED] Blackmagic mini monitor crashes Resolume
[FIXED] Flash crashes with autopilot
[FIXED] Problems with rendering to DXV in After Effects and Cinema4D
[FIXED] Transitioning from a clip with less than 100% opacity, starts the transition at 100%
[FIXED] Alpha Type interpretation switches after save and reload
[FIXED] File codec and Alpha channel not recognised correctly
[FIXED] MirrorQuad renders black line with DXV files
[FIXED] Resolume reports screen size as 0x0
[FIXED] After creating a new composition, the blend modes of the previous comp are still shown
[FIXED] Improved Mac Pro multi screen performance
[FIXED] Wipe transitions up, right and left have a small jump at start
[FIXED] midi/osc/dmx mapping smpte delay is not possible
[FIXED] Decklink 4k rgb support
[FIXED] Memory usage increases slowly on audio files
[FIXED] Still images with custom duration values are reset after relinking
[FIXED] DXV Codec Compression type checkbox (in AE DXV Settings dialog) hit area size too small
[FIXED] Cannot load BMD4K device when Decklink is in use
[FIXED] When starting a comp with a BM device, it will default back to its first setting
[FIXED] Switching to a deck with an active BM device

First there was 4.1.9.
Then there was 4.1.10.
Now here's 4.1.11.

Bugs are like Pokemon. It's hard to catch them all.

But we keep going. Because we love you.

4.1.11 is a free update, available from the downloads page...

[Fixed] Crash with some DXV encoded files.
[Fixed] Some thumbnails are upside down.
[Fixed] Alpha not recognised in Animation / ProRes codecs.
[Fixed] Crop doesn't work on 4.1.10.
[Fixed] Turning on Show Display and Slice info, disables all output.
[Fixed] Mouse cursor does not change in Advanced Output Transform mode.

//Edited 27/5 with 4.1.10 update info //

Resolume 4.1.9 is a happier and smarter Resolume. 4.1.10 is even happier.

Thanks to your quick and awesome user feedback, we were able to squash a few important bugs that had snuck their way in to the 4.1.9 release. So here's the 4.1.10 update which fixes the following bugs:

[FIXED] Glitches and crashes with some clean aperture clips
[FIXED] Twitch does not load correctly on PC and OSX 10.6.8
[FIXED] Slice stacking order is reversed
[FIXED] Alpha layer blend mode and Alpha clip transition do not work well together
[FIXED] Flash crash on Mac when removing with X button on the clip panel

Stay calm and download 4.1.10.

-------------------------------------
For this update we focused on workflow improvements. Check out the video for a quick overview of the eye catchers.


[fold][/fold]
We tweaked lots of little things in lots of little places. The devil is in the details, so while you’re downloading, check out the full release notes below.

A special note to people on OSX Mavericks: in some cases, Resolume’s performance would drop when the menu bar on the second screen was disabled via ‘Displays have separate Spaces’ in the Mission Control system settings.

In 4.1.9, we are removing the menu bar automatically. So we recommend enabling ‘Displays have separate Spaces’ again in the preferences of your Mac.



NEW: Scroll to layer and clip when made active with shortcut
NEW: Disable scroll to layer and clip via Preferences
NEW: The playhead and In and Out points show their values in MM:SS:FF
NEW: When position x/y is animated, set default in and out points to comp size
NEW: When a monitor is lost, it is disabled instead of moved to the remaining monitor
NEW: Remember deck scroll position per deck
NEW: Show audio codec
NEW: Audio FFT Gain knob is midi mappable
NEW: Polish translation ( thanks to Marek Olczak! )
NEW: PolkaDot, Triangulate and Twitch effects



FIXED: Output doesn’t cover Menu Bar on second screen on Mavericks
FIXED: Alpha Transition crossfade
FIXED: [CRASH] Selecting a buffer size of 64 or lower gives spinning wheel of death on Mavericks
FIXED: Black level compensation no worky
FIXED: Saturation filter doesn't actually saturate
FIXED: RGB Delay does not initialise the viewport correctly
FIXED: When show display and slice info is turned on, syphon displays show "no device"
FIXED: Screen (both interface and output) flash black when dragging a clip from the browser
FIXED: Syphon source does not have a duration
FIXED: No worky for different user on OSX
FIXED: On windows startup, the last layer is selected
FIXED: Position X/Y does not have a midi range for spinner
FIXED: Transitions are wonky when incoming clip is Syphon source
FIXED: Opening a VST ui for the second time gives a blank white window
FIXED: Composition Midi Map shortcuts for BPM Tap/Pauese/Resync/-+ are not saved
FIXED: SMPTE stutters after ~30 minutes
FIXED: Recording a file with special accents in the name did not save and load correctly
FIXED: Composition master opacity is multiplied with slice alpha
FIXED: Autopilot does not kick in at the right moment after scrubbing the playhead
FIXED: Bright line on edge blend
FIXED: Disable Quit Confirmation doesn't work on Windoze
FIXED: Menubar pops up when using a parameter from property panel in windows
FIXED: [CRASH] when creating a new comp when the advanced output is open
FIXED: Cursor no snappy on folded effects
FIXED: If Show in Finder/ Explorer is chosen, would be nice if the file is also actually selected
FIXED: Waveform zoom does not go away when switching to empty clip

Here is the first Resolume release of 2014! Version 4.1.8 fixes a few critical bugs, and the Mac installer is now signed with our Apple Developer ID so it will install without complaining on Mac OS X 10.8 and 10.9. We are still working on a few fixes for 10.9 Mavericks but those require a bit more time and will be released in version 4.1.9.

Hit that download, then read the short releases notes:

[FIXED] Crash when setting autopilot for individual clip and switching to non-empty deck
[FIXED] SMPTE delay causes weird jumps around the 1 (and 2 and 3 and...) minute mark
[FIXED] Arena doesn't remember DMX Preferences
[FIXED] Clip menu does not always work for active clip
[FIXED] Crash on shutdown with windowed output

Happy New Year Everybody!

From the files of Resolume, Private Investigator:

"The moment the dame walked in, I knew she meant trouble. I should have never taken the job, but I needed the money. Besides, I'm a sucker for a sweet smile and a twirl of the hips.
[fold][/fold]
I figured it would be an open and shut case of keeping an eye on the husband. Spend a few nights shadowing the guy. Find out where he was spending all his late nights, coming home smelling of expensive liqour and traces of lipstick on his collar.

Turns out there was more to it than that. The dame asked me to check out a gang of bugs. A particularly nasty gang of bugs going by the name of the Shifty Boys.

I found the bugs hanging out in a shady bar called Kernel. I didn't like the looks of them. Not one bit. I took a deep breath, made sure my .45 was loaded. Then I entered the dive…"

Resolume 4.1.7 is a tough as nails PI, that always gets the job done, no matter what.

http://www.resolume.com/download

New Features
[NEW] Enttec USB Pro MK2 support
[NEW] SMPTE input visible in status bar (bottom right)
[NEW] Increase SMPTE input delay compensation to -5000 and +5000 ms
[NEW] Buffered effects (like Trails, RGB Delay and Stop Motion) now flush their buffer after 1 second


New Effects
[NEW] Jitterbug transition - Like TimeSwitcher, only better.
[NEW] Tint - Like Colorize, only better.
[NEW] MirrorQuad - Like Mirror, only better.

Improvements and important bug fixes.
[FIXED] Flash no worky on the Mac
We now include the flash player in the .app bundle so on the mac Resolume does not depend on the flash player that is installed on the system.

[FIXED] Crash when creating new composition, resizing composition and opening midi map
This was a huge thorn in our eye for a long time. Luckily we were finally able to get our hands on a machine that had the problem, and we fixed it up good.

[NEW] Implement latest Enttec DMX USB PRO API (ftd2xx.lib)
This is tech talk that basically means we now speak the same language as Enttec themselves. Entteccian.

[NEW] Layer Opacity 0 = Bypass
When the opacity of a layer is 0 it's not rendered anymore. This can give a huge speed improvement, especially on hi-res compositions with a lot of layers.


Bug Fixes
[FIXED] Strobe effect and plugin do not respect alpha
[FIXED] Hue rotate doesn't like pink
[FIXED] File relocating on PC
[FIXED] Repeatedly triggering a clip with the enter key and receiving midi causes a freeze
[FIXED] Having a slash in comp name doesn't save
[FIXED] Piano mode for beatloopr doesn't really work intuitively
[FIXED] Double clicking a comp file in Finder/Explorer still opens the last loaded comp
[FIXED] Soft-edge with 3 or more overlaps is broken
[FIXED] MIDI is acting weird again ( sigh )
[FIXED] Matrox capture source crashes arena
[FIXED] Windows SHIFT lock SHIT
[FIXED] Video card engine couldn't start when Wait for Vertical Refresh & OpenGL Triple Buffering is On
[FIXED] There's no place like 10.0.0.127, Dorothy

Tamas Nagy, ( whom you might know as the creator of the wonderful OSX VJ app Coge ) has created a very powerful yet simple and intuitive timeline control app called Vezér. [fold][/fold]



Using the magic of OSC or tried and true Midi, you can control every parameter in Resolume ( and of course any other OSC or Midi enabled app ). Especially interesting for Resolume users, Vezér has a preset system. So if there are certain addresses you often use, you can save these as a preset. These presets can in turn can be sub categorized, per application or per intended use. Tamas has even been kind enough include a few presets and example compositions for the major VJ players.



On the creative side, it sports some very sexy presets for keyframe interpolation. Every animator worth his or her salt knows good animation is made or broken in your bezier curves. Tamas makes it ridiculously easy to smooth, ease, bounce or spring your animation. Anyone that has tried and failed to keyframe the perfect bouncing ball in After Effects can now breath a sigh of relief.



All in all it's a very well designed little app, both visually and workflow wise. Definitely check it out.

http://www.vezerapp.hu